Some Thoughts on the Gun-Toting Home Depot Vigilante

The Café is not an open-carry establishment. (Go ahead, take my imaginary restaurant to court. I dares ya!) There is a reason for this, and it mostly has to do with the clientele and the specialty of the house. So, naturally, the staff here is always on the lookout for suspicious bulges in the jackets of our patrons.

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Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez, who was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, said she heard a scream and feared the incident was worse than a theft. She acknowledged the shooting in the parking lot was a mistake. "I made a decision in a split second," the 46-year-old Clarkston woman told a judge. "Maybe it was not the right one, but I was trying to help." Rochester Hills District Court Judge Julie Nicholson said: "I don't believe any malice was involved in what you were doing, but I believe you have to think about what could have happened."

This woman opened fire in a parking lot of a Home Depot. Intent, as Jack McCoy always reminds us, follows the bullet. She's lucky her intent didn't follow the bullets right into a busload of nuns.

"If guns are taken away from her and she learns her lesson, that's fine," Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper told The Detroit News Wednesday afternoon. "That's the key. That she doesn't have access to guns and she doesn't have access to ammunition. Hopefully someone has sat down with her and talked with her about what responsible gun ownership is all about."